Monday, May 18, 2015

A controversy that is easily settled:
Native speaker teachers of English

Stephen Krashen

The requirements

I think
it is obvious that a competent second language teacher should meet the
following requirements:

a knowledge of how language is
acquired.

a knowledge of pedagogy (e.g. if the
Comprehension Hypothesis is correct, this means familiarity with TPRS,
sheltered subject matter teaching, and popular literature of interest to
second language students)

a high level of competence in the
second language.

The
point of stating these three requirements is that number 3 alone is not enough.
This runs counter to the practice of hiring native speakers just because they
are native speakers.

A misunderstanding over
"immersion"

I tried
to make the three points presented above in a letter published in the South
China Morning Post (June 19, 2014), in which I stated:"Local teachers who can help students find
comprehensible and interesting listening and reading material, and who can
teach them about the process of second language acquisition are far preferable
to native speakers whose only advantage is an accent."

In my view, my letter should have been greeted warmly by native speakers
of English teaching in Hong Kong (the NET group). It highlighted the necessity
of understanding language acquisition and pedagogy, of professionalism, not
just being a native speaker. (1)

Instead, the letter resulted in a storm of protest from native speaker
English teachers in Hong Kong, accusing me of seeking to "end the NET
scheme." (NET = Native English Teachers)

The problem, in my opinion, was the headline/leader to my letter, which
was written by the editorial staff of the newspaper: Students need immersion, not NET. The headline was unfortunate for
two reasons:

"Immersion" is an ambiguous
word with two totally opposite meanings: For language education
professionals, it means content-based or sheltered subject matter
teaching, discussed earlier, and is consistent with the Comprehension
Hypothesis. But for civilians, non language-educators, it means
"submersion," doing nothing, simply plunging the language
acquirer into a second language environment full of mostly
incomprehensible input.This is, of
course, inconsistent with the Comprehension Hypothesis. I suggest that
professionals stop using this term.

I did not say "not
NET." I said that being a native speaker of English alone is not
enough. The other two requirements are very important. In a subsequent
letter (July 5, 2014) I stated: "we should not prefer native speakers
only because they are native speakers.A qualified local English teacher who understands pedagogy is
preferable to a non-qualified native speaker." I also pointed out the
confusion caused by the headline. But the headline to this letter was also
confusing: "Qualified local teachers preferable." I asked the editor to change
this to "Qualified local teachers preferable to unqualifed native
speakers of English." The editor declined to make this change.

AccentAll things equal, should we prefer a native speaker because of accent? Is
having a native accent really an advantage?I think not, if the local teacher speaks English extremely well. In fact, it is not clear that students automatically pick up the accent
of their teacher: sociolinguistic studies indicate that we get our accents from
our peers, not our teachers. Our accents represent the "club" we have
joined or want to join(Beebe,
1985).Students may want to be associated with models other than the teacher.

NOTE

1.Lei and Li (2015) reported that science graduate students in China rated
native English speaker teachers more highly than non-native speaker English
teachers in requirement (3), English proficiency, which is no surprise. They rated
non-native speaking teachers more highly, however, in requirement (2),
pedagogical skills. Native speakers were rated more highly in classroom
management, These results show where each group can improve: Native speakers
can easily inform themselves about language acquisition, and take steps to
improve their pedagogy. Non-native speakers can improve in English, and current
findings show a clear and easy way to do this: through extensive pleasure
reading.

Sunday, May 10, 2015

Published in the Los Angeles Times, May 12, 2015, with heading “LAUSD's college-prep curriculum: Does it help or hurt?”

Re: "Do we need college prep?" May 10

I am a "good math learner." I was an enthusiastic student in AP calculus in high school and I use advanced algebra and statistics in my work a great deal. But the Times statement, "Not everybody needs advanced algebra," is correct.

Research by Michael Handel, reported in The Atlantic in 2013, shows that only about 9% of all jobs demand any algebra beyond the first year.

Advanced math should be offered in high school, but it should not be required for college admission. Those who later discover a need or desire for it are free to study advanced algebra any time in their lives.

Stephen Krashen

original editorial: http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-college-prep-20150510-story.html
This letter: http://www.latimes.com/opinion/readersreact/la-le-0512-tuesday-math-college-prep-20150512-story.html

Friday, May 8, 2015

Published in the NY Daily News, May11, 2015, with the title "Carnegie was right."

Re: New York City libraries take $10M hit in de Blasio's 2016 budget. May 8.

"When I read about the way in which library funds are being cut and cut, I can only think that American society has found one more way to destroy itself." Isaac Asimov.

I wonder if Mayor de Blasio is aware that research over the last three decades has repeatedly shown that libraries have tremendous value for school-age children: Children who live in states that provide more access to reading material through public and school libraries do better on standardized tests of reading.

Libraries are especially important for children of poverty: The school library and the public library (especially during the summer) are often their only source of books.

We complain about our children's reading levels, but fail to provide the means for improving it.

Stephen Krashen
Professor Emeritus
University of Southern California

Original article: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/nyc-libraries-10m-hit-de-blasio-2016-budget-article-1.2214965
This letter: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/11-baltimore-brady-bibi-article-1.2215986

But Kamil's version of SSR is bizarre:In his first study, the treatment was not
pure SSR, but used a variety of incentives: rewards for reading a certain
amount (pencils, books, t-shirts, public recognition via names on a public list
of heavy readers, and certificates and medals at an award ceremony.There is no evidence that providing
incentives is helpful (eg Krashen, 2003) and there is some reason to believe it
can be harmful: Kohn(1999) reviews the
research on rewards, and concludes that when we provide rewards for an activity
that is already pleasant, it sends the message that the activity is not
pleasant, and that nobody would do it without a bribe. These kinds of rewards
can thus extinguish the behavior. There is no long-term research on the effects
of rewards on recreational reading.

Kamil gives no information about the comparison
group, and provides no details about the results, other than telling us that
SSR didn't work. No means, standard deviations or the results of statistical
tests are provided.

Willingham notes that in Kamil's second study,
SSR worked because the texts were more challenging (nonfiction) and students
received some instruction. We are not given any details about the books, nor
any information about the kind of instruction the students received, other than
it was designed to help students understand informational texts. A second group
who also read challenging books with no instruction did not show
improvement.

The results of this study suggest only that when
students are given difficult texts, they do better with some help. They do not
address the question of whether reading comprehensible and interesting texts is
good for literacy development. Also, once again, means, standard deviations and
the actual results of statistical tests were not presented. We are only told
that the researchers used multiple regression.

In other words, Prof. Willingham has gathered
support for his position from two very questionable studies.

Prof.
Willingham appears to accept the conclusions of the National Reading Panel. In
short, the panel missed many many studies, and misreported several others. In
my first response to the panel, cited by Prof. Willingham (Kappan, 2001), I
reported that sustained silent reading (SSR) was as effective or more effective
than comparison groups in 50 out of 53 published comparisons, and in long-term
studies, SSR was a consistent winner. Since then, quite a few more studies have
been published supporting SSR in first and second language education.

Responses
to the National Reading Panel:

Krashen, S. 2001. More smoke and mirrors: A critique of the National
Reading Panel Report on fluency. Phi Delta Kappan 83(2): 119-123.